India, the U.S. and Southeast Asia lead the world in stand-alone (SA) 5G deployments, while Chinese operators and India’s Jio lead in active 5G SA users, Ookla said in a new report. Europe lags, “with operators still hesitant due to the relatively low [return] on existing 5G investments and unclear business cases for 5G SA.” The United Arab Emirates and South Korea lead in performance -- with download speeds reaching 879.89 Mbps and 729.89 Mbps, respectively, Ookla said. Ookla recorded just 11 new 5G SA deployments in nine countries in 2023 but said growth is expected to accelerate this year. “5G SA uses a dedicated 5G core network, unlocking the full capabilities of 5G with better speed, latency, support for large numbers of devices, and more agile service creation,” Ookla said: It also allows new features including network slicing, but comes with increased infrastructure complexity, higher costs and requires more staff training.

Generative AI (GenAI) smartphone shipments are expected to grow 363.6% year over year in 2024 to 234.2 million handsets, or 19% of the smartphone market, IDC said Tuesday. Growth is expected to continue at a compound annual rate of 78.4% through 2028. "GenAI smartphones are inevitable and look to be the next big thing the industry has to offer consumers," said Anthony Scarsella, IDC research director-mobile phones. “Despite the challenges of elongated refresh cycles and macroeconomic uncertainties, GenAI capabilities on the smartphone will drive upgrades and represent a significant opportunity for both vendors and application developers alike,” IDC said.

Handset repair advocates told the FCC that a 60-day period in which handsets can’t be unlocked is too long. Commissioners approved an NPRM 5-0 this month seeking comment on unlocking rules (see 2407180037). “For the sake of full hardware freedom, we call on the Commission to eliminate hardware-based carrier lock-in periods entirely and require carriers to unlock handsets upon sale,” a filing posted Monday in docket 24-186 from iFixit, U.S. PIRG, The Repair Association, the Secure and Resilient Future Foundation, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Waveform. A 60-day period, as the FCC proposed, is “customer-hostile, props up predatory business models, and weakens the secondary market for smartphones,” the groups said.

Mississippi-based wireless carrier C Spire said it will pull all its commercials from the Olympic Games in Paris following a controversial segment in the opening ceremonies. “We were shocked by the mockery of the Last Supper,” the carrier said on X on Saturday. The scene showed French DJ and producer Barbara Butch in the center of a long table with drag queens on both sides. Olympic officials said the scene was a tribute to Dionysus, the Greek god of wine, not Leonardo da Vinci's "The Last Supper," according to numerous reports. A spokesperson for Paris 2024 said there was "never an intention to show disrespect to any religious group.”

A March FCC order creating a voluntary cyber-trust mark program is effective Aug. 29, a notice for Tuesday’s Federal Register said. Questions remain about when the program will launch, with the FCC yet to finalize some aspects of the rules (see 2405090051). The cyber mark label will appear on consumer IoT products with an accompanying QR code (see 2403140034).

S&P Global Ratings rated as credit positive T-Mobile’s planned $4.9 billion investment in a joint venture with private-equity firm KKR to buy fiber provider Metronet (see 2407240020). “We view the proposed JV favorably because it will allow T-Mobile to expand its presence in the growing fiber broadband market in a capital-efficient manner, given that fiber deployments are very expensive and typically cost about $1,200 per passing,” S&P said. The report noted that T-Mobile previously launched a partnership with private equity firm EQT as part of a proposed acquisition of fiber-to-the-home provider Lumos (see 2404250047). “In aggregate, we expect these JVs will provide T-Mobile with access to over 10 million households over the next several years, which will complement its fixed wireless access (FWA) footprint and enable it to bundle in-home broadband service with its mobility product.”

Dell’Oro Group warned that radio access network revenue worldwide is declining and that this trend should continue through 2028. Global RAN revenue is projected to decline at a 2% compound average growth “as continued 5G investments will be offset by rapidly declining LTE revenues,” Dell’Oro said last week. The Asia Pacific region is expected to lead declines. “It is not a surprise that there is rain after sunshine,” said Stefan Pongratz, vice president-RAN market research: “In addition to [mobile broadband]-based coverage-related challenges, this disconnect between mobile data traffic growth and the capacity boost provided by the mid-band, taken together with continued monetization uncertainty, is clearly weighing on the market.”

Garmin International defended its request for a waiver of FCC rules for handheld general mobile radio service (GMRS) devices limiting them to one transmission every 30 seconds (see 2310060031). Garmin proposes “digital data transmission parameters that, although different than the currently applicable rule, are more protective of GMRS voice communications,” a filing Thursday in docket 24-7 said. Relative to existing rules, “Garmin’s proposed parameters would drastically reduce the duration of each digital data transmission to provide more frequent -- but, in the aggregate, substantially shorter -- data transmissions,” Garmin said.

The IOT security group ioXt Alliance urged the FCC to monitor closely fees the lead administrator charges cybersecurity label administrators (CLAs) as the commission takes comments on implementation of its voluntary cyber trust mark program. “There should be a neutral oversight committee” reviewing "the expenses a Lead Admin would incur and guide a decision towards an appropriate amount to charge CLAs,” a filing posted Friday in docket 23-239 said: “This fee may be higher during the initial rollout of the program, but should be lowered in the following year(s) as there will not be a need for as much ‘set up’ costs.” The group warned “there is a unique opportunity for the Lead Admin to have an unfair economic advantage by charging fees to CLAs.” Comments are due Aug. 19, replies Sept. 3, on a July 18 notice from the Public Safety Bureau. FCC commissioners approved the program 5-0 in March (see 2403140034).

CTIA Thursday marked the 30th anniversary of the FCC’s first spectrum auction by calling on Congress to restore the agency’s lapsed general auction authority. “For the past three decades, this Nobel-prize winning innovation has become increasingly key to America’s economic competitiveness and innovation leadership,” CTIA President Meredith Baker said. The anniversary is “an important reminder of the critical role that auctions play, and we call on policymakers to restore auction authority with a spectrum pipeline so that we can secure the benefits of wireless leadership for all Americans,” she said. CTIA also released the opening video of what it said will be a series of remembrances about auctions and the early days of the wireless industry. “The essential asset of wireless communications is spectrum,” former FCC Chair Tom Wheeler said in the first video. Wheeler noted that he became involved in wireless as part of a group of investors that won spectrum licenses in one of the lotteries that predated auctions, “the FCC’s dumbest way of allocating spectrum.” His group’s pingpong balls were picked “and suddenly I was in the wireless industry.” Licenses were also assigned through “beauty contests,” where companies made the case at the FCC on why they needed spectrum in a given area, he said. “That may have solved the instant problem, but it certainly didn’t facilitate how do you then have a concerted effort to deliver the important services,” Wheeler said: “It was widely understood that the … system was flawed.” Tom Sugrue, former head of the D.C. office for T-Mobile, said licenses' value increased rapidly “as people began to appreciate what mobile technology was worth.” But the “tools the FCC had to assign those licenses were becoming increasingly, obviously deficient.”